A day we knew we’d never see is upon us. You’d be lying if you say you knew the Hawks were going to win that game in Minnesota as you saw Blair Walsh line up for that field goal. I was watching the game in a packed Dino’s Pub down in Renton and as that kick sailed wide, I can only describe it as spontaneous combustion. I’m honestly surprised there wasn’t seismic activity reported on Sunday afternoon as I’m sure that scene was repeated at countless places around the Seattle area.

All that’s great, but to paraphrase Bill Belichick, we’re on to Carolina. Someone check. I know that with all these teams moving around there might be some re-alignment, but did Carolina somehow get moved into our division? I swear we’ve played them more times in the last 5 years than we have Arizona. It’s almost starting to feel like that old Niners-Cowboys playoff rivalry, with the exception that the rest of the nation doesn’t hate these two teams as much. Well, not yet anyway. For the playoffs, we dip back into the classics. Let’s get ready for Sunday morning through the hijinks of Bushwood Country Club and Caddyshack.

“Hey everybody, we’re all gonna get laid!” I can’t be sure, but I could swear I heard someone yell that at Dino’s after Walsh’s kick hooked like my drive does off the tee. I couldn’t help but think that the legend of the golden horseshoe had been revived in one of the most improbable ways. What’s the golden horseshoe you ask? I wrote a missive about that a couple years back. Go ahead, take a look. I’ll wait. http://12thmanrising.com/2013/10/29/legend-golden-horseshoe/ There’s no doubt in my mind that Pete shined that thing up and had it with him on the sideline in Minneapolis.

In the immortal words of Slim Shady, guess who’s back, back again?! I know, I know, I’ve been a little derelict in my duties of attempting to provide some levity prior to each Seahawks game. If you’d been working 25% more hours the last 2 months at a job that actually pays you, you probably wouldn’t have a whole lot of extra time for jobs that don’t pay anything.

But no more excuses. It’s playoff time!! I’ll be honest though, the feeling is different. It’s a combination of something’s missing since the game isn’t at home and frustration since it felt like the Hawks could have flipped this switch much earlier in the year and we could have a home game. Nonetheless, we are where we are. We play the cards we’re dealt. Just might be tough to hold on to those cards on Sunday since we’d need about 5 layers of gloves to keep our fingers from falling off were we unfortunate enough to be sitting on the metal bleachers of TCF Bank Stadium. If there’s a movie I associate with Minnesota, it’s most definitely Grumpy Old Men. Let’s get ready for Sunday through the shenanigans of John Gustafson and Max Goldman.

“Cold enough for ya? Brrrrr! Oh shut up, fat ass!” Ok, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Or the Abominable Snowman in the room as it were. If you’ve been off the grid for the last week you might not have heard, but it’s apparently going to be cold on Sunday. It moves around, but the high is expected to be between 0 and 4 degrees with a wind chill about 15 degrees below that. But you know what it’s not? It’s not 20 below which is not uncommon in Minneapolis in the winter. It’s not being coupled with a blizzard, which also tends to happen back there. Yes, the ball can be harder to kick and catch in that kind of weather. Sure, everyone’s going to want to run the ball. Remind me, when these teams last met, how did the Vikings running game work for them? Exactly. So, let’s channel Aaron Rodgers here and R-E-L-A-X.

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